Chartercharter-ietf-ipsecme-11

The IPsec suite of protocols includes IKEv1 (RFC 2409 and associated
RFCs), IKEv2 (RFC 7296), and the IPsec security architecture (RFC
4301). IPsec is widely deployed in VPN gateways, VPN remote access
clients, and as a substrate for host-to-host, host-to-network, and
network-to-network security.
The IPsec Maintenance and Extensions Working Group continues the work
of the earlier IPsec Working Group which was concluded in 2005. Its
purpose is to maintain the IPsec standard and to facilitate discussion
of clarifications, improvements, and extensions to IPsec, mostly to
IKEv2. The working group also serves as a focus point for other IETF
Working Groups who use IPsec in their own protocols.
The current work items include:
IKEv2 contains the cookie mechanism to protect against denial of
service attacks. However this mechanism cannot protect an IKE
end-point (typically, a large gateway) from "distributed denial of
service", a coordinated attack by a large number of "bots". The
working group will analyze the problem and propose a solution, by
offering best practices and potentially by extending the protocol.
IKEv2 utilizes a number of cryptographic algorithms in order to
provide security services. To support interoperability a number of
mandatory-to-implement (MTI) algorithms are defined in RFC4307 for
IKEv2 and in RFC7321 for ESP/AH. There is interest in updating the
MTIs in RFC4307 and RFC7321 based on new algorithms, changes to the
understood security strength of existing algorithms, and the degree of
adoption of previously introduced algorithms. The group will revise
RFC4307 and RFC7321 proposing updates to the MTI algorithms used by
IKEv2 and IPsec to address these changes.
There is interest in supporting Curve25519 and Curve448 for ephemeral
key exchange and EdDSA for authentication in the IKEv2 protocol. The
group will extend the IKEv2 protocol to support key agreement using
these curves and their related functions.
IKEv1 using shared secret authentication was partially resistant to
quantum computers. IKEv2 removed this feature to make the protocol
more usable. The working group will add a mode to IKEv2 or otherwise
modify IKEv2 to have similar quantum resistant properties than IKEv1
had.
There have been middle boxes blocking IKE negotiation over UDP. To
make IKE work in these environments, IKE and ESP packets need to be
transmitted over TCP. Therefore the group will define a mechanism to
use IKE and IPsec over TCP. The group will also provide guidance on
how to detect when IKE cannot be negotiated over UDP, and TCP should
be used as a fallback
Split-DNS is a common configuration for VPN deployments, in which
only one or a few private DNS domains are accessible and resolvable
via the tunnel. Adding new configuration attributes to IKEv2 for
configuring Split-DNS would allow more deployments to adopt IKEv2.
This configuration should also allow verification of the domains using
DNSSEC. Working group will specify needed configuration attributes for
IKEv2.
Currently, widely used counter mode based ciphers send both the ESP
sequence number and IV in form of counter, as they are very
commonly the same. There has been interest to work on a document that will
compress the packet and derive IV from the sequence number instead of
sending it in separate field. The working group will specify how this
compression can be negotiated in the IKEv2, and specify how the
encryption algorithm and ESP format is used in this case.
This charter will expire in December 2017. If the charter is not
updated before that time, the WG will be closed and any remaining
documents revert back to individual Internet-Drafts.